Rachel Maddow called out the mainstream political media for trying to turn liberals like Elizabeth Warren and Nancy Pelosi into the tea party.
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Maddow said,
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One of the main most basic reforms. One of the most necessary things that we did to protect ourselves from another total collapse of the financial system to insulate taxpayers so that we didn’t have to pay for what the banks did wrong, finally. That is what they just undid. That is why Democrats got so mad. It’s a really simple idea. It’s called Section 716 of The Dodd-Frank Act, and the banks hate it. Of course they do. Who wouldn’t want the United States taxpayers to promise to come and rescue you if you lost money? You can keep all the upside, but if it goes south, the taxpayers will pay. Who wouldn’t want that?
But that simple thing. That’s the basis of the giant fight in Washington that took the whole Beltway by surprise. And because that’s what the fight was about, that’s why the headliner in the Democratic Party leading the fight was seen to Sen. Elizabeth Warren. It’s not just that she is a liberal, and Democrats like her, and everybody knows her name. It’s subject specific. This is her wheelhouse. This is how she came to Washington in the first place, right? Elizabeth Warren first became known as a public figure because she was tapped by President Obama to oversee the bailout. I mean, her outrage over the banks screwing the taxpayers is the whole reason why she got into politics.
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This is a substantive fight about a specific thing. This is not just liberals blowing off steam.
The Beltway has been saying oh, look liberals blowing off steam. That’s not what this is. The Beltway wants the left and right to be mirror images of each other. What’s the lefty version of the tea party? They want the center to always be correct, and they want the ideological edges to always be equally crazy and impractical in just the same way. But it’s almost never what’s going on, and it’s not what’s going on here.
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The people who revolted inside the Beltway were not, HEY BELTWAY, were not the Democratic equivalent of Michele Bachmann, and Steve King, and Louie Gohmert. The people who revolted inside the Democratic Party. It’s not a mirror image. They weren’t the fringe of the party like the revolters on the right….This wasn’t the Louie Gohmert fringe of the Democratic Party. This was the leadership and most of the Democratic Party, who all said no against the wishes of their own White House.
Maddow made two points. The liberal Democratic pushback is based on policy, not ideology. The Democrats who revolted aren’t a fringe movement. Beyond what Maddow said, I would add that what is going on with the government funding bill is the physical movement of the Democratic Party to the left.
The people who are standing up against the policy riders in this bill are going to agree with their party probably ninety percent or more of the time. The Democratic Party is not divided like the Republicans, but Democrats are signaling that the party is moving to the left. The same behavior occurred when President Obama teamed up with congressional liberals to kill a bill that would have given hundreds of millions of dollars in permanent tax cuts to corporations.
The mainstream press is now saying that Elizabeth Warren is the new Ted Cruz, but this comparison is completely wrong. Cruz is a self-serving grandstander, who is trying get elected president by opposing everything and causing chaos. Warren and the Democrats are fighting because they disagree with something in the government funding bill.
Mainstream media laziness is one of the main reasons why the public is poorly informed. When journalists who are supposed to be political reporters insist on painting by the numbers instead of thinking, the result is poor coverage that misses the point of the issues of our day.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
